Paranormal

Special
Feature

BEYOND the
NORMAL

By Nazuk
Ahluwalia

“There are things that our brains
just can’t understand”
- Art
Bell

Did
someone say 'Kathy' as I was climbing up the house
stairs?

Why do
we peep out intuitively at someone we like leaving
in their car? Or simply see the chair move. I hear
jangling sounds. There is someone standing there!
A lot of research and energy has gone into
discovering the unknown, the paranormal –
something which defies logic, reason and
rationality.

Paranormal researchers and spirit hunters
have gained ground and popularity with the growing
interest in the mystic and the recent spurt in
paranormal experiences. According to recent
surveys, as many as three quarters of Americans
believe in the paranormal and one in five claim to
have seen a ghost.ven Winston Churchill was said
to have an uncanny experience while he was
visiting the White House after the second world
war. He claimed to have met the ghost of Abraham
Lincoln to whom he extended his
greetings.

The
field of paranormal usually revolves around
extrasensory perception, ghosts, poltergeist, and
reincarnation. Paranormal researchers
specialize in parapscyhology and metaphysics and
attempt to explain the unexplainable through these
fields. The media, undoubtedly the
entertainment industry, has been a major influence
on the perception of the parnormal which many a
times is also stretched a little too
far.

Ghosts as per researchers are actually energy
sources which cannot travel in and out of the body
as shown in movies. They instead linger on
and about wherever there is electromagnetic fields
and cause instances of thumping doors, doorbells
ringing at the dead of night and so
on.

A recent
case that came into light was of a San Francisco
techie of Indian origin who claimed to have got a
call from his mom from Mumbai at very odd hours.
She frantically spoke Telugu and disconnected the
call. Upon ringing back, the techie’s father
attended the phone and told him that his mother
was sound asleep and that no calls were
made. The phone call was deemed a telecom
glitch but over the course of few days, the family
faced several paranormal instances such as
pounding of bedroom doors and loud noises in the
dead of night. Upon investigation by paranormal
researchers, the house was adjudged to be replete
with electromagnetic current which was causing the
problem and the solution was a cleansing ritual
which apparently drove off the bad
energy.

However,
this has more than often been contested by the
rationalists who claim that ‘spirit
hunters’ mislead the public through
scientific mumbo jumbo. In fact, 80-90%
cases have no paranormal bearings and are
associated with psychological disorders or faulty
activity of the brain. For instance, poltergeist
experiences – when objects seem to move or
are thrown are in fact a result of damage in the
right hemisphere of the brain.

Frightened witnesses often claim to have
seen shadows of the corner of their eye which
suddenly vanish. Swiss scientists experimented
with a patient suffering from epilepsy by
electrically stimulating the part of the brain
which creates the idea of self. The patient
reported a shadow copying her every
move. By interfering
with the area that helps tell the difference
between ourselves and others, the brain’s
ability to understand its own body was affected,
thus leading to the creation of a copycat shadow
person.

Another
common paranormal experience is communicating with
a dead person through the Ouija board wherein the
chip is said to be commanded by the spirit. On the
contrary, according to psychologists, it is termed
the ideometer effect - the power of suggestion
causes muscles to move unconciously i.e people
expect the chip to move so it moves.

The
instances of spotting apparitions according to Dr.
Wiseman are a result of infrasound vibrations.
Humans can hear sounds up to 20,000 Hertz, but are
unable to detect anything lower than 20 Hz.
These “silent” noises are called
infrasound, and while we can’t hear them, we
can feel them in the form of vibrations. Our
eyeballs have a resonant frequency around 20
Hz, and therefore anything under it will
cause our eyes to create images that aren’t
really there.

Despite
rational explanations, several cases, the ones
investigated by Ed and Lorraine Warren, the
original ghostbusters are yet to be examined with
the lens of science. One such is the Annabelle
case, the doll who seemingly was possessed. It
ultimately was taken by the Warrens to an Occult
Museum as they felt it contained a unique
evil.

The
ultimate question of whether paranormal phenomenon
exists? Suffice is to say, it is subjective.
The human mind and subconscience is an intriguing
explanation for the rationalists while the
believers see the world with limitless
possibilities. As Reikki puts it
“We create beliefs because we
don’t like believing that the universe is
random."